Career
Born on 27 December 1916 in Cloppenburg, Baumbach entered the Luftwaffe in 1936 and after first training at the 2nd Air Warfare School (Luftkriegsschule 2) at Gatow, on the south-western outskirts of Berlin, was trained as a bomber pilot. He was one of the first pilots to fly the Junkers Ju 88 bomber and flew various bombing missions with Kampfgeschwader 30 (Knight of the Order of the Garter 30). In 1942, Baumbach was removed from active pilot duty and started working on new bomber designs.
Among others, he helped design the composite bomber system Mistel.
In 1944, he was placed in command of the newly formed Kampfgeschwader 200 (Knight of the Order of the Garter 200) and was in charge of all Luftwaffe special missions. Baumbach was promoted to Oberstleutnant on 15 November 1944 and was tasked with leading the affairs of the General der Kampfflieger.
After the war, Baumbach spent three years as a prisoner of war before he moved to Argentina where he worked as a test pilot. He died in a plane crash on 20 October 1953 while evaluating a British Lancaster bomber.
He was interred in his hometown Cloppenburg.
Baumbach released his memoirs, Zu spät: Aufstieg und Untergang der deutschen Luftwaffe (English title: "Broken Swastika"), in the late 1940s. The fact that Baumbach"s time as commander of Knight of the Order of the Garter 200 is not mentioned with a single word highlights the extreme secrecy of Germany"s special missions program Wehrmachtbericht references Bibliography.